reflections on professor goodnow’s contribution to

Kay Bussey

Reflections on Professor Goodnow’s Contribution to Developmental Psychology

Brief Background

2

A pioneer on many fronts.

Most relevant for this location and this celebration here today, Jacqueline was the first female Professor at Macquarie University - first, in the School of Education and later in the School of Behavioural Sciences.

Her journey to this position started much earlier and followed a highly distinguished path that broke new ground at every turn.

Brief Background

3

In 1924 Jacqueline was born in Toowoomba and in 1936 her family moved to Sydney (Paddington). She received a scholarship to attend St. Vincent’s Ladies College, Potts Point and completed school at 16 years of age.

In 1941 Jacqueline received a bursary to undertake an Arts degree at the University of Sydney. In 1944 she graduated with First Class Honours and a University Medal. This was a significant achievement as few women attended university at this time.

The Harvard Years

4

A giant step for a woman in 1949 was made by Jacqueline when she set off (with a NSW Woolley Travelling Scholarship) to undertake a Ph.D. at Harvard, although her actual degree was from Radcliffe.

At this time women were excluded from obtaining degrees at Harvard “as a part of the social order of the time.” The president of Harvard expressed concerns about the “natural mental capacities” of the female sex.

The Harvard Years

5

Radcliffe represented a “compromise between what women wanted and what Harvard would give them, as an alternative to the two prevailing models of coeducation and separate women’s institutions.

Radcliffe College educated women by contracting with individual Harvard faculty to provide instruction, but offered its own degrees, to be countersigned by Harvard’s president.”

The Harvard Years

6

Jacqueline Jarrett completed her Ph.D. before moving to Munich to join Bob Goodnow who she had met at Harvard when they were both students. Bob and Jacqueline were married in Munich in 1951.

In 1953, Bob returned to Harvard to complete his Ph.D. and Jacqueline undertook postdoctoral research under the mentorship of Professor Gerome Bruner.

The Harvard Years

7

This led to a pioneering book on cognitive psychology titled, “A study of thinking” (Bruner, Goodnow, & Austin, 1956 reprinted in 1986)

This book signalled the start of one of the major cognitive revolutions in Psychology in the 20th century.

Locating the book in its historical context is informative.

The 1950’s was dominated by behaviourism.

The Harvard Years

8

B.F. Skinner sometimes dubbed the father of behaviorism was also at Harvard during Jacqueline's tenure.

Psychology was being swept up in the predominant behaviorism of the day and yet Jacqueline and her colleagues were bucking the system.

The book was criticized for its inattention to learning theory. However, it was praised by psychologists out of the mainstream for that time (e.g. Piaget).

The Harvard Years

9

Jacqueline worked alongside Jerry Bruner to champion a constructivist approach to cognition.

Bruner is credited with coining the term “scaffolding” to describe student-teacher instructional interaction whereby students develop progressively greater skills and knowledge.

The Harvard Years

10

Bruner also helped plant the seed of another significant direction in Jacqueline’s research and thinking - the importance of culture.

These ideas were based on studies showing, for example, that poor children were more likely than rich children to overestimate the size of coins. Both value and need influenced the way the children perceived the world around them.

The Harvard Years

11

After a tumultuous time during the 1960’s and 1970’s with psychoanalytic and behaviouristic approaches vying for ascendency, cognitive approaches to psychology strengthened towards the end of the 20th century and have gained in strength at the beginning of this century.

Of course, challenges to the existing systems do not come easily and are rarely met with acceptance.

From Harvard to Macquarie

12

After a great deal of movement across continents including Hong Kong (moved from adult to child cognition and culture was again highlighted) and appointments at a number of universities, Jacqueline returned to Sydney.

This time, she was located at Macquarie University, first in the School of Education (1972) and later in the School of Behavioural Sciences (1975).

Adding Social to Cognitive Development

13

Jacqueline’s next pioneering feat was to add social to cognitive development.

Influence of Bronfenbrenner – the words of Bronfenbrenner resonated strongly with Jacqueline ---developmental psychology was, "...the science of strange behavior of children in strange situations with strange adults for the briefest possible periods of time” (1979).

The case for social cognitive development (Centre for Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University, 1984-1985, John Flavell).

Adding Social to Cognitive Development

14

Context matters

Some of Jacqueline’s major contributions involved context: specifying the features of context, the features of development or change, and the inter-connections between them. Cultural considerations were of prime importance flying in the face of the increasing intrapsychic approach being adopted in psychology.

Context Matters

15

Environment is not a monolith

Need to consider not only physical contexts, but social contexts too.

Social contexts – e.g. school climate

Cultural practices can limit what is ‘thought about’ or considered possible (Shweder, Goodnow, Hatano, Levine, Markus , & Miller, 1998).

Context Matters

16

Jacqueline defined ‘cultural practices’ as referring to “ways of acting that are followed by all or most members of a social group (in this sense , they are ‘cultural’), that are carried out in routine, everyday, taken for granted fashion, and that attract little reflection or questioning, that come to be felt as ‘natural’”.

Context Matters

17

This view of Jacqueline’s accords well with West and Zimmerman’s (1987) ‘doing gender’.

The distinctions between male and female are embedded in the different ways of acting towards males and females –starting with names, clothing, games, toys, and ways of interacting with the two sexes.

This implicit differentiation of the two sexes carries strong messages of their differences and little or nothing needs to be said about distinguishing males from females.

Context and Life SpanDevelopment

18

Moves away from an individual intrapsychic approach to one that considers the context in which the behaviour develops and occurs.

Development involves not only changes in cognitions, knowledge, and understanding but also changes in contexts e.g. school, families, paid work, group memberships, and social relationships.


19

In particular, a focus on practices opens up new ways to think about development.

“Change may need to focus on practices rather than on information or ways of thinking” – e.g. conventional gender occupations; linguistic practices in the use of he/she.


20

Context has been important for distinctions between ‘right’ and ‘wrong’.

The ways in which moral judgements come about has been the subject of considerable morality research.

Developmentalists have traditionally focused on age related changes as mainly fueled by cognitive development.


21

Jacqueline’s work adds a new dimension to the study of morality by adding context.

Cultures may vary in terms of activities that are regarded as acceptable or not and the transmission of this knowledge has been the subject of much anthropological research.

At a more micro level, the transmission of morality within the family has also been the subject of her research in conjunction with Professor Grusec.


22

Grusec & Goodnow (1994) examined the socialization of morality within the family.

Three main steps were identified:

Step 1 - Children’s perception of an adult message (a perception that may or may not be accurate). Critical is the clarity of the message.

Step 2 – The acceptance or rejection of the perceived message. Critical is the quality of the relationship between parent and child, and the presence of contrary messages from others (e.g. media, peers etc.)

Step 3 – Adopting the message as one’s own rather than viewing it as externally imposed. This internalization step is regarded as being dependent to some degree of decision making or choice.


23

Development may stem as much from encounters with diversity as from cognitive growth.

Jacqueline argued that for change to occur (either developmental or through intervention), exposure to alternatives in heterogeneous groups may be the route to successful change.

Support for this viewpoint comes from Tremblay et al. (1995). Teaching young boys to be less aggressive was easier in a group that mixed anti-social and pro-social children than it was in a group of only anti-social boys.


24

Jacqueline was strong on promoting life span development. She advanced the case for adopting a life-span perspective rather than “regarding development as completely shaped by what happens in the early years” (Goodnow, 2006).

“An ‘early years only’ perspective leads to a limited view of development”.


25

This is not to deny the importance of the early years as those years can be that start of cumulative disadvantage, but “we need to look carefully at what is usefully carried forward to particular future situations”.

For example, as adolescents spend more time away from home and in other contexts, parental supervision declines. Hence, willingness to disclose to parents is the important carry forward “predisposition” (Kerr & Stattin, 2000).

Parents’ Ideas in Context

26

Where do parents ideas come from, how do ideas change, how do ideas relate to parental actions?

Jacqueline studied parents’ ideas as a form of adult cognition (not attitudes) – attributing greater cognitive life to parents in their decisions about their parenting practices. Jacqueline noted that “to focus only on parents’ overt behaviors is to treat parents as unthinking creatures—” (1988).


27

In her review on parents ideas in 1988, Jacqueline argued the case for extending the study of parent’s ideas from a focus on cognition to incorporating concepts and research from more social approaches including social psychology, anthropology (folk models), and sociology (sociology of knowledge).


28

Jacqueline realized the contribution of multiple factors in understanding parents’ ideas and parenting practices.

In the concluding section of her 1988 paper she stated, “---Is it possible to put together ideas, actions, feelings, and outcomes plus demographic or cultural variables, and to determine how they are related to one another?”


29

These comments are made against the backdrop of some very influential comments by McGuire (1986) who stated that, “the low correlation of affective and cognitive components of attitudes with actual behaviorhas been the scandal of attitudes research” (p.118).

Jacqueline met McGuire’s challenge by suggesting that the relations between ideas and actions may be more complex than thus far investigated.


30

She also argued that more complex data analytic techniques to examine the interplay of variables over time would add to the understanding of the role of parents’ ideas in children’s development.

Indeed, recent advances in data analytic techniques such as structural equation modeling, latent growth analyses, and cross lagged panel analysis have opened up the options of examining multiple influences on parents’ ideas and the multiple ways that parental ideas influence their practices.

Development in Context

31

• Jacqueline went on to examine cognition and ideas in many contexts and with many collaborators.

• A sample of these topics and collaborators include:• Men, Women and Household Work (Goodnow and Bowes, 1994).• Work for home, school, or labor force: The nature and sources of changes in

understanding. (Psychological Bulletin, Bowes, & Goodnow, 1996). • Children and families in Australia: Contemporary issues and problems.

(Burns & Goodnow, 1979). • Agreement between generations: A two-process approach (Child

Development, Cashmore and Goodnow, 1985) • Impact of parental discipline methods on the child's internalization of

values: A reconceptualization of current points of view (Developmental Psychology, Grusec & Goodnow, 1994)

• New directions in analyses of parenting contributions to children's acquisition of values (Child Development, Grusec, Goodnow & Kuczynski, 2000)


32

• Household work and the development of concern for others (Developmental Psychology , Grusec, Goodnow, & Cohen, 1996).

• Acquiring cultural forms: Cognitive aspects of socialization Illustrated by children's drawings and judgments of drawings. (International Journal of Behavioral Development, Goodnow, Wilkins, Dawes, 1986)

• Parental social networks and child development (Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, Homel, Burns, & Goodnow, 1987).

• Distributions of caregiving tasks among family members: The place of gender and availability. (Journal of Family Psychology, Lawrence, Goodnow, Woods, & Karantzas, Gery, 2002).

• How should people act in inheritance situations? Specifying differences in expectations. (International Journal of Behavioral Development, Goodnow& Lawrence, 2008


33

Inheriting as People Think it Should Be (Goodnow and Lawrence, 2013

The nature of responsibility: Children's understanding of “Your Job”. (Child Development, Warton and Goodnow, 1991).

Jacqueline’s Contribution

34

Jacqueline’s contribution to developmental and beyond has been gigantic.

Her contribution is evidenced by her awards, her influence on others (both near and far), and the currency of her ideas that are providing the building blocks for future generations.

Selected Awards

35

Distinguished Contributions to Research by the Australian Psychological Society (1988)

The G. Stanley Hall Award for Distinguished Contributions to Developmental Psychology by the APA Div.7 (Developmental Psychology; 1989)

The Society for Research in Child Development (1997) A Companion of the Order of Australia in 1992 An honorary doctorate from Macquarie University in

1995

Jacqueline’s Influence on Others

36

• Jacqueline’s influence on others will be well illustrated by her co-authors and colleagues during their talks here today.

• Personally, in terms of the model of development based on Bandura’s social cognitive theory that I follow, there are many linkages with Jacqueline's work.

• Context/environmental factors are important. Development needs to be studied in context (e.g. children and the law – cross-examination).

• Beliefs are important and they need to be contextualized to the situation (self-efficacy beliefs).

Jacqueline’s Influence on Others

37

• Drawing on Bandura’s concept of moral disengagement to explain the lack of concordance between knowledge and actions --- good people justify their bad behaviour in specific situations.

• Acknowledging the social component of morality by studying collective moral disengagement.

The Currency of Professor Goodnow’s Ideas

38

• Theorizing contexts/the environment.

• The environment is not just a passive entity imposed on individuals.

• Rather cognition occurs in context.

• Adding social to cognitive development.

• Broadening social contexts to culture practices while acknowledging their facilitatory and inhibitory effects.


39

Jacqueline illustrated these cultural impacts in the example of concern about the number of Hispanic children progressing through to high school in the Californian school system .

In Cooper, Dominquez and Rosas (2005) intervention to change this pattern, two steps were involved.


40

Students needed information about how the system worked and course prerequisites etc.

Students needed to be convinced that those steps or goals were part of their “possible selves” (“not only achievable but also in keeping with who they might be”) – the acceptability of this progression for their families and social groups with whom they identified.


41

Cognition in context as :

information is not ‘free’ resistance to adopting new ideas context boundedness in terms of what is possible cultural diversity - beyond social cognitive development

to a consideration of broader cultural factors


42

Culture and context matter and Professor Goodnow has shown us how they matter.

There are many researchers who have benefited from her insights, wisdom, and sharp intellect. Many of those researchers are here today.

Her influence was much wider, however, and extended to researchers throughout the world and to the people of the world who have benefited from her more expansive view of development that takes account of their specific circumstances.

reflections on professor goodnow’s contribution to

Documents